The Extreme Situation
is Beautiful: An Interview with Hou Hanruby Carolee Thea

Independent curator and critic Hou Hanru embodies the new globalism of the
contemporary art world. Born and educated in China, he has been based in Paris
since 1990. While architectural projects have a special significance for him,
his shows also explore the opposition between tradition and modernity in novel
ways, and present a unique vision of cultural intersection. His exhibitions
include "Singapore 99" at the Singapore Art Museum, "Gard d'Est
- the Parisian Art Scene Today" at the Forum of Contemporary Art, Luxembourg
(1998), and "Traffic Jam" at the Burofriedrich in Berlin, and he also
co-curated "Cities on the Move - Asian Contemporary Art," a traveling
exhibition with venues in Austria, France, the United States, Denmark, Britain,
Thailand, and Finland (1997-2000), and the French Pavilion for the 1999 Venice
Biennale.

Carolee Thea: Art functions in a place of anxiety and questioning: a
curatorís job is to discover the themes which underlie the prevailing mood of
a society. Regrettably, some curators create exhibitions in the service of their
own ideas, contributing to their own power.

Hou Hanru: Curating an exhibition can be a very contradictory practice.
The role of the curator contains a delicate, sophisticated, and subtle borderline.
It is the worst of circumstances to use the artist just as an illustration of
your ideas.

CT: How would you describe the curatorís role?

HH: The role is to pose a question, and the artist should participate
in the formation and the answering with different solutions so that the process
is a collaboration. But yes, there are moments when you can see the excessive
hand of the curator.

CT: Is the show you did for Apex Art (New York, 1999) with the architect
Yung Ho Chang an illustration of a collaboration?

HH: In that program, I and Evelyne Jouanno, the co-curator, attempted
to analyze what occurs when a curator is asked to do a group show that ends
up being rather conventional, mainly due to the limits of budget and space.
It is a difficult condition.

HH: Well yes, it is challenging. If you have a lot of money and space
itís easy to do a standard group show. The creative aspect of Apex is that their
conditions test how far they can go. For me, curating is a mixture of experiences
coming together, and the program at Apex is a condition of timing, finances,
and spatial concerns. I decided to introduce architecture, which is the natural
result of what Iíve been doing in projects like "Hong Kong Etc." (for
the second Johannesburg Biennial) and "Cities on the Move" (co-curated
with Hans Ulrich Obrist). These shows talk about urban issues, how art can reconnect
itself to visual culture, and how architecture becomes a means to proclaim certain
visions as well as to add a spatial condition.

CT: How did you become involved in architectural projects?

HH: It came so naturally, because at a certain time in the early í90s
all of these kinds of selfish expressionsóthe body and sexualityóhad become
so academic and egotistic. For me, it was a symptom of how a generation of artists
had lost the capacity to recommit themselves to reality. They just created very
enclosed circles, like masturbation.

CT: Do you think this is a personal or cultural issue relating to your
Chinese background?

HH: Yes, my generation of Chinese has been fighting for more fundamental
issues of humanity. For us, the first necessity of art is never to return to
the enclosure of the self. The second thing is to see how modernity rewrites
the process of social transformation in different conditions, and then how it
is visualized. Architecture and urban issues become important because theyíre
the most general expression of this kind of project.

At the same time, my experience gives me the opportunity to look at a more
global situation from a different point of view. The way I talk about the relationship
between art, society, and everyday life is very different from that of most
of my colleagues in Europe and the States, because of different personal stories.
I went to art school and became committed to this domain (itís never really
a profession), because I wanted to contribute my efforts to change reality,
to have more relevance. Maybe visual art is irrelevant to me.

CT: Were you trained as an art historian, a critic, an artist, architect?

HH: I had an interest in all these things but was trained in art history
in Beijing. I also did painting, performance, installation, and architectural
research at school. The main subject for my degree was medieval sculpture and
churches, how the relationship between visual art and architecture evolved because
of social change.

Interior of the Morningside Center of
Mathematics in Beijing, 1998.

CT: I see a direct connection now between the work you curated for the
French pavilion and your former studies. Columns topped with a Chinese bestiary
juts through the Neoclassical pavilion roof, and there is a chariot outside.
You and the artist Huang Yong Ping have created a kind of medieval courtyard.

HH: Not only medieval in its form but an overlapping of two histories
through two different architectural systems. But this was not my idea; the artist
came up with it. I was so excited, because it had a resonance in the back of
my heart, and I said that he had do thisÖbut also in terms of timing and physical
conditions in Venice, and so we did it together.

But letís get back to Apex. We decided to do an architectural project and to
introduce a Chinese architect, Yung Ho Chang. Chang created a site-specific
installation and provided the audience with a direct and corporeal experience
of his architectural vision. Itís very important that architecture has a voice
in this discourse. Yong Ho Chang spent 15 years in the States to study and teach,
and he decided to go back to China to set up the first private architectural
firm.

View of the "Street
Theater," exhibition, held at Apex Art in New York, 1999.

CT: This also becomes a story of how modernity travels through continents.

HH: Modernity is a global thing, and usually the process of Western
culture has been connected to other cultures through colonization: the African
mask influenced Picasso, and Frank Lloyd Wright was inspired by Chinese Zen
and Lao Tsu, the first Taoist philosopher. When you talk about Western modernity,
it is such a complexity. Exchanges or confrontations with artists of different
cultures help us discover universal aspects, which can stimulate other projects.
Thus, where the social conditions in places are different, the social exchanges
are very important.

CT: Do you think the exchange thatís taking place at the Venice Biennale
is forced? Everyone is uncomfortable about the number of works from so many
Chinese artists, similar to when Russian art was imposed on the Biennale.

HH: And then it disappeared in three years. This is not the first time
the Biennale has had a Chinese presence at such a scale, but itís the first
time you have so much propaganda. The last time, for the Biennale of 1993, the
first Chinese avant-garde was exhibited in the pavilion where you now have the
press service. It was an insulting presence of Chinese contemporary art, which
stole the name avant-garde and showed the most cynical works. It was the first
marketing of so-called Chinese Political Pulp. Thereís a huge difference not
only in propaganda but in the selection and artistic interpretation of this
situation. And the main progress is that this time the Chinese works are shown
inside an international show. Itís true that there are very strong Chinese artists
here, ones that you have not seen in previous Biennales, and thereís also an
intimate and personal decision by curators linked to personal or marketing interests.

CT: I understand that the Chinese works exhibited in this Biennale are
from one collector.

HH: Not all, but many. Two years ago, with such a heavy American presence,
no one raised the question, "Why the heavy American presence?" American
and European art has been seen for years and years, and itís taken for granted.
Why do we ask about so many Chinese? But, this is boring to me. I am more concerned
with what happens in the next Biennale; will we see the same quantity of Chinese
art?

CT: With the curatorial idea of globalism, a decision was made to democratize
the Venice Biennale, the bastion of Western art, to describe this issue of the
moment.

HH: Until the whole thing becomes normalóthen we will have achieved
a kind of goal. In the French pavilion you have Chinese and French, and thatís
great, but what will happen next: have an African and Icelander representing
the French? But if next year people say, "weíve done the Chinese thing,
now letís go back to France," then thatís the disaster. There are different
ways of consuming this thing.

CT: If the market and institutions come in too fast, itís the speed
of consumption that becomes the subject matter. Globalism is a utopian concept,
and strategies that take place in these brief periods witness a culture returning
to itself.

HH: Yes, but I have used this occasion to turn it into something else.
There are different ways of consuming the idea of globalism. For instance, in
the French pavilion, the two curators presently living in Paris, myself from
China and Denys Zacharopoulos, originally from Greece, presented two artworks
that were very separate but functioned under the same roof, but not as a two-person
show. Rather it is an enforced juxtaposition equivalent to mutual interpenetration.
This is part of my personal agenda. In the past people have spoken of globalization
as taking Western modernized life and economies and altering underdeveloped
countries, but you rarely hear of how non-Westerners are functioning in a Western
society.

CT: Some people are expelled from their own culture, as in Kosovo, and
there are those who choose to relocate.

HH: It doesnít matter how they left their countries. What is important
is that they become even more open to other cultures in their new countries
and develop their own cultural context and contribute to a new intellectual
and cultural scene with global significance.

CT: There are 200,000 Chinese living in Paris. Some, like Huang Yong
Ping and yourself, are making strong work integral to the scene.

CT: How do you react to the dichotomy of traditional versus modern cultures?

HH: The traditional versus the modern has been an obsession in certain
periods of history and development, especially in cultures where modernity is
a new thing; people are obsessed because there is a necessity about it. But
I think this question has been solved in life situations, where you have to
deal with it in concrete and fragmented ways. Innovation and tradition constantly
interweave. An image that people talk about is the fundamentalist Islamic soldier
who uses advanced technology to make religious wars. On one hand they forbid
television, but on the other they use satellites. Another image is the poorest
Indian man drinking Coca-Cola and wanting Nike shoes, a strange mixture of modern
Western products and non-Western traditions. We need to look at the world in
a more diverse way and use different elements as a strategy for critical intervention.

CT: The mythological bestiary surmounting Huang Yong Pingís columns
in this 19th-century Neoclassical pavilion is an ironic reference to the past.
Do you know who the architect was?

HH: I was told that he was an Italian mimicking the Neoclassicism of
the French.

CT: Huangís columns topped by mythological beasts insert the Chinese
into French cultureóthis ironic gesture is also perhaps a mocking one.

HH: The strategy that Huang carries out is a fundamental aspect of his
thinking; he uses different elements in particular contexts. In China, he organized
a group called Xiamen Dada and introduced modern Western art elements (Duchamp,
Dada, Cage, and Beuys), while in the West, he introduced Chinese mythologies.
His employment of Chinese elements is not to elicit a belief in themóhe doesnít
believe in them either. He uses systems in a strategic way to show you that
there are different ways of looking at the world. Itís a question of which system
of knowledge has been empowered, how a dominant system has become a hegemony,
how other cultures can resist this in an active way. Not only to claim their
identities but to propose alternative projects. The French pavilion is an example
of this, using these ideologies to show another way of seeing the architecture
and its symbolic function.

HH: And a negotiation. When you look at his version of Chinese mythology,
itís so contradictory; he shows the interior contradictions among those images.
It is a destabilizing intervention into fixed ideas.

CT: The contemporary art media donít always react to an instability
but to an intervention.

HH: I have to work with journalists and television reporters. Itís my
duty to explain the work, but they always ask the wrong questions; they think
the audience doesnít want to know more, so they shorthand the information.

CT: People arenít given enough time to absorb anything and although
we consume culture on the run the brain seems to be mutating. The "body"
subtext in this Biennale deals with anxiety about multiculturalism but also
anxiety brought on by pc-encoded, biotechnological, millennial gluttony.

HH: The body is being transformed in a process of spatialization as
it disintegrates into space. In visual art there are many expressions of this
flux between the material and immaterial, existing only in time, in spatialization,
rather than in a fixed existence. The challenge for the media, institutions,
and the audience is to confront these expressions, to respect and understand
them, and help make them visible. In large exhibitions like the biennial you
need time, but how much time can you afford to sit in front of a video projection
that lasts 60 minutes? This is a challenge to curators. Sometimes you have to
do a show, and you need to view a piece five or six times to understand it,
but you decide to use the piece and donít have time to view it. It can be a
disaster. Itís a kind of curatorial schizophrenia, to deal with this anxiety.
I donít think artists are rarified; theyíre part of our communication system,
and they play the game of this new dialogue, dealing with the issue of excessive
information, lack of time and space, and how to handle it. Contradiction and
chaos have the same value as reasonable knowledge. And maybe there are new artworks
that are challenging because theyíre structured in a very fragmented way. You
can go into a room with a projection and spend all day with it or five minutes
and say Iíve seen it, itís an interesting negotiation. Itís important that we
discuss this.

CT: How do artists deal with this notion of time at the end of the century?

HH: To analyze the situation in a critical way, on the one hand, is
impossible and contradictory. On the other hand, perhaps it gives us the opportunity
to invent new models of communication and to create new possibilities and alternatives.
For instance, you can have a film that goes on for years and another for five
seconds, and these can exist side by side with the same importance. Artists
propose very different projects, but the goal is how to present them in a public
space, and thatís our job.

CT: Are you finding new forms in artistsí studios that confront the
compression of time?

HH: Forms are not a big issue for me. Any expression is fine, as long
as it has something to say in the right context. A good example is the first
version of Douglas Gordonís movie 24 Hour Echo, the one where he slows
the Hitchcock movie into 24 hours. Itís an amazing and impossible experience,
because you have to be sitting there for that time. I think the extreme situation
in art is beautiful. Fifteen years ago, Huang did a paradigm of this in the
piece called Photographing things you donít want to look at. It was really
an impossible situation. In a Gabriel Orozco work, the fact that he uses two
kinds of "pool" tables isnít the most important point, itís that he
sets up an impossible condition for you to be there in front of the work.

CT: Do you mean time or split screen orÖ

HH: Or a mental situation, a challenge whether to look or not. Like
David Hammonsís talk about fetish. How much you will pay for a snowball of different
sizes? It is such a beautiful gesture, a touching, delicate, sophisticated moment
of existence and knowledge.

CT: Yes, it is about about the contemplation of life and death, the
body vs. the mind.

HH: Yes, you have to make a decision for yourself and your destiny.
You can complain about power, but the extreme moment is when all of this is
fading away and you still want to catch it and hold it.

CT: And the snowball has this resonance because itís ephemeral.

HH: It covers the issue of consumer society, cultural difference, social
space, sensuality and beauty, and you donít know how to handle it.

CT: And it implies the body, as its temperature will melt the snow.

HH: The snowball vaporizes, is gone, and you feel a loss in your body,
making you think your body should take a different form, to look at your body
in another way.

CT: Youíre saying that in corporeal disappearance we can rebirth the
mind. Do you know other artists who do this?

HH: One piece Huang proposed, but which hasnít yet been realized, was
around the glass wall at the Centre Pompidou, a clear tube sitting in the corridor
between the first and second layer of glass around the contemporary gallery,
in which he wanted to put hundreds of different insects that eat each other,
at the end you have one or two left.

"Street Theater," exhibition held at Apex Art in
New York, 1999.

CT: Very fat ones.

HH: Itís like a ball rolling through the tube and almost invisible.
If you stand in the wrong place, you donít see the piece, just a transparent
tube. For the work to exist and for you to exist, it is a perpetual struggle
and pushes a confrontation with a huge problem, an aspect of being. Earlier
I spoke of being interested in urban architecture; itís such a complex system.

CT: Yes, how do social spaces present an opportunity for imagination
and transition? Tell me about your corridor projects in Paris.

HH: Social spaces are complexities where the individual spaces connect
and network, and where certain transformations take place. The corridor project
is an earlier one that I did with my wife, Evelyne Jouanno, when we had no money
or place to stay in Paris. We found a small apartment on the top floor. Here
there was a triangular corridor, five meters long and one meter wide with a
sloping roof. When we moved into the house we changed the wallpaper and painted
everything white and then questioned why white? The main reason was what we
see in galleries and museums, and now we had to figure out what to do with it.
We saw this useless corridor and we decided to make it into a project area.
Corridors are probably the most interesting places in buildings, because they
are liquid and need defining and redefining constantly; they are also transitions
from private to public space. We decided to invite a different artist each month.
Yes, it was crazy, and we had to live with it. Every month we would spend a
week helping get the piece done, then three weeks opening it to people. In one
night we could get a hundred people. The first artist we chose was Thomas Hirschhorn,
who filled the place with cardboard and wood and rubbish so that you can hardly
go through. The next artist removed the tapestry, the window, put in gas heating
and electricityóand well, this game went on for 13 months. The only month we
didnít do it was when our daughter was born.

"Street Theater," exhibition held at Apex Art in
New York, 1999.

CT: Did your wife give birth in the corridor?

HH: Almost. The hospital was only 100 meters away! Now we have moved
out of the house. We only wanted to do the project for a year. It wasnít an
alternative gallery, just the right place to raise the right question.

Carolee Thea is a writer and a contributing editor for Sculpture. Her review
of the Venice Biennale appeared in the October issue.